There is a need to improve the reliability and service life of transportation assets made from metal alloys like aluminum and steel. These assets, which come in repeated, harsh contact with the materials or media being hauled, support said materials in transport. The storage area for such materials usually consists of a pair of sidewalls, front wall and structural floor components. An example of one such application is a dump truck. Because of the design of most material transporters, it becomes necessary to tilt their storage areas to a relatively steep angle for emptying loads in entirety often through a rear tailgate. Under these conditions, the floor components of these dump bodies exhibit reduced wear resistance, and thereby diminishing overall service life of the trailer.
The foregoing problems worsen when the materials being hauled are glutinous, such as hot asphalt, and the trucks operate in varying temperature climates cyclically from hot to cold. In the latter environs, there is a tendency for material loads to stick or freeze to the dump body floors making unloading even more difficult. When these hauler tailgates are opened and dump bodies tilted, truck operators often resort to costly, more time consuming and sometimes dangerous techniques to release the loads hung up or frozen within their dump bodies. Such practices include backhoe assists, high pressure water washes and/or xe2x80x9cslam dumpingxe2x80x9d, each of which detrimentally impacts the equipment in question. It can also be a significant safety issue as some trailers can overturn in these processes.
Some stand alone liners are known for improving the service life of materials used to make dump body floor components. Representative truck liners include those set forth in U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,273,381, 4,752,098, 4,944,612, 5,518,285 and 5,662,374. Generally, such liner devices are costly, prove difficult to install, maintain and/or periodically replace, and sometimes create liner seams in the dump area that negatively impact efficiencies of the dump bodies into which they are installed.
Wear resistant materials are known for numerous high-performance tool applications including drill bits, scraper blades, bearings, cutting tools, chippers, rubbing seals, pump liners, valve inserts and thread guides. Representative compositions for such applications include those claimed and described in U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,725,512, 4,965,139 and 5,632,861.
It is a principal objective of this invention to improve the wear resistance performance, and also corrosion resistance, of metal stock used to manufacture materials transportation products for truck dump bodies and the like. It is another main objective of this invention to provide greater wear resistance to such transportation products by applying a wear resistant coating directly thereon. It is another objective of this invention to provide a method for applying variable thickness, wear resistant coatings across the length and/or width of such products to accommodate the varying wear resistant needs of said product. It is yet another objective to provide a method for applying different wear resistant coating compositions to varying areas of the same materials transportation product.
The method for accomplishing the foregoing objectives consists of applying at least about 0.005 inch thick coating of an amorphous or noncrystalline composition (after application) directly to the metal sheet, either prior to or after its formation into a materials transportation product. This composition, to which steels, aluminum alloys, polytetrafluoroethylene (xe2x80x9cPTFExe2x80x9d), PTFE derivatives and/or high molecular weight polyethylenes may be added, is then thermally sprayed onto the substrate/metal sheet surface of this invention.